Critical+Analysis+of+The+Trumpet+Player

__Music and the Past__ __by Rebekah Wolanski__ Our pasts are always with us. No matter where life takes us, no matter how much we change, the way we used to be, or the way our ancestors were, will always shape who we are. Langston Hughes’s poem //The Trumpet Player// is about just that. It is about how no matter what life is like for you, the reminders of the difficulties of your past will always be there. Suffering can often be said to be the human condition, and the suffering you face during one point in your life does not completely leave your mind when that event passes. //The Trumpet Player// suggests that some things, like music, can ease the pain of past suffering, but that these memories will always be with you, in the back of your mind.

The poem //The Trumpet Player// is, at face value, about a black man playing the trumpet. The title pretty much sets the scene, and is quite literal. The poem discusses music and its effect on sadness, and touches a little on alcoholism in the line “desire/that is longing for the sea/where the sea’s a bar-glass/sucker size” (stanza 4). This means that he is longing for alcohol, a big drink, and the drink is like the sea. He drowns himself in a sea of alcohol, to let go of his pain. There are many parts in the poem that discuss music and its effect on sadness as well as that past sufferings will be with you as a reminder.

One way in which Hughes shows that suffering of the past will be with you as a reminder is the line, “Has dark moons of weariness/ beneath his eyes/where the smoldering memory/of slave ships/blazed to the crack of whips/about thighs”(stanza 1). This says that he has bags under his eyes because he is remembering the difficulties of being a slave, of discrimination against his race, of pain. Pointing out the fact that the trumpet player has bags under his eyes shows that the man often dwells on his past anguish, and that maybe he has sleepless nights, which make him weary. Also, it says the memory is smoldering. Smoldering means to show or feel barely suppressed anger, hatred, or another powerful emotion and this memory has a burning sadness, or anger at the injustice in which his race was treated.

Hughes goes into talking about the music and how it helps the man soothe his suffering and his hardship. In this group of lines, “The music/from the trumpet at his lips/is honey/mixed with liquid fire/the rhythm/from the trumpet at his lips/is ecstasy/distilled from old desire” (stanza 3) Hughes says that the music is sweet and hot and the rhythm is sheer happiness taken from what he wanted before. This shows that the music is this great, wonderful thing that is happy, the opposite of the weary suffering stated in the first stanza.

Another way that Hughes states that music helps soothe the man is in the last stanza where it says, “its hypodermic needle/ to his soul/but softly/as the tune comes from his throat/trouble/mellows to a golden note” (stanza 6). He states that the music is under the man’s skin, in his soul, soothing him softly, relieving the pain of himself and his ancestors. A hypodermic needle is a hollow needle that goes under the skin. While the first stanza suggests that the trumpet player bears the weight of the burden of his own memories as well as his slave ancestor’s, the last stanza suggests that the music is helping to relieve this burden, even if it’s temporary.

Langston Hughes is a poet who weaves in contemporary notions such as jazz music, with racial issues, and memories of past ideas. His poem //The Trumpet Player// interlaces concepts of ancestry, and the past always being with you, with music being a solace from suffering and pain. //The Trumpet Player// proposes that some things, like music, can ease the pain of past anguish, but that also past anguish can add a depth to music that wouldn’t be there without the sadness. The basic idea in this poem is that these recollections will always be with you, in the back of your mind.